Category: Articles

Feeling some kind of way. If you’re like me, you use this rather imprecise phrase to describe a rather pointed feeling that you have. For most, it’s just another way of saying that something’s bothering them. For me though, it goes a little deeper, and it has some heftier subtext to it.

When I’m feeling some kind of way, I’m usually experiencing one of three things. I may be experiencing emotional/cognitive dissonance, or I may be having a bought of mystic melancholy or divine discontent. On rare occasions, I’m just straight up pissed off and grumpy about something, but for whatever reason I’m trying to be a bit more polite or tactful about expressing it. (That tends to be a rarity for me NOT because I’m too enlightened to experience such negative moods, but because I tend to be more vocal and less concerned about putting it as politely as ‘feeling some kind of way’.)

While we all occasionally experience a case of cranky’s, that’s not really the focus of this article. Let’s look at these other shades of feeling and go into some detail though.

Cognitive and Emotional Dissonance

Cognitive dissonance is the experience of holding two conflicting viewpoints or beliefs at the same time. Emotional dissonance is basically the feeling that you get when you’re examining something that threatens your sense of identity. I am lumping these two together for the purposes of this article because I tend to have the most experience with them in the same context. (And I suspect that many of the folks reading are of the intuitive leaning, so I imagine that you may be having these experiences without realizing it.)

Empaths and intuitives will have impressions or experiences that make them question their own sanity. Many of these experiences are actually cognitive or emotional dissonance. Many (if not most) of these experiences are triggered by over-identifying with someone else’s energy – be it emotional, mental or experiential. So we just need to be able to say “This isn’t my crap! I don’t have to deal with it! Yay!” and then move on, right?? If only it were that simple!

Being open enough to experience another person’s perspective frequently means encountering emotions, opinions and ideas that are foreign to your own. Identifying when these thoughts and feelings originate with someone else is truly an art-form that empaths in particular have to develop for survival. Dissonance occurs when something gets stuck in works. This can only occur when it’s illuminating an aspect of our own experience that strikes some sort of resonance with the ‘guest thought/emotion’.

When such a resonance occurs, it becomes your responsibility to explore this territory. This is one of those beautiful moments that you get to learn something more about yourself! And guess what? A lot of times, we don’t greet these moments with leaps of joy because they tend to be uncomfortable.

Let me give you an example that I got to witness a few years ago. A heterosexual male friend of mine was present while I was discussing the attractiveness of a guy that had come into the shop I was working in with a female co-worker. The straight friend piped in and agreed that the fellow in question was indeed attractive. He even went on to disagree with my co-worker and I about what the fellow’s most attractive feature was. Then I saw it wash over his face. Blessedly, he felt comfortable enough with me to be able to talk through the train of thought causing him some dissonance. He questioned how he found the cute guy attractive, and started to really wonder if he may have some latent gay feelings, and it was making him rather uncomfortable. He explored this sensation, and over the course of about a week was able to confidently affirm that he is indeed straight, but falls a little more towards the middle of the Kinsey scale of sexuality than he originally thought. The struggle for him was visibly uncomfortable as he wrestled with how he defined his attraction, but he walked away from the experience feeling more enlightened.

This kind of moment is all too common for intuitives and empaths. That said, it is an invitation, not an excuse. It’s an invitation to know yourself more deeply, which my personal belief says that this is the prime reason for our experience in the human day-to-day world. This is by no means an excuse to belittle or berate others’ views, or worse yet, martyr yourself. (I see this waaaaayyyyy too often.)

For me, just knowing that this has a name helps me to navigate through the experience of dissonance. I’m not usually happy when it’s occurring, but I’m always grateful for the growth that it brings.

Mystic Melancholy and Divine Discontent

These are two terms that I became familiar while reading an author named Orion Foxwood (fantastic author on fairy traditions, southern conjure and witchcraft). Both of these experiences are driven from the level of spirit. It isn’t uncommon to feel down or to feel like things need to change. Sometimes though, the feeling surpasses what we normally experience as depression. That’s not even necessarily that we’re feeling lower than usually do, but that there’s a difference. The feeling runs deeper, and there’s a sense of longing with it. I describe it like my soul is singing a song that I can’t remember the words to. This is mystic melancholy.

Mystic melancholy occurs when your soul is longing for a connection that’s missing. A lot of times this can be confusing because we often don’t have a conscious idea or experience of what it is that we’re missing. We just know that part of us is reaching out for something that isn’t there in the moment.

Conversely, Divine Discontent occurs when change needs to occur, usually because we are out of our soul’s flow. Most often, we are doing something to gum up the works, and this will manifest as an anxiety or nearly compulsive need to change something around. Many times we displace the feeling into changing things that we have more immediate control over, but this is just a coping mechanism. Divine discontent presents itself when we are just plain out of alignment with our deeper purpose.

Let me give a current example through my own personal sob story. (I am a good Pisces, so I’m great at martyring myself and whining, so why not put it to good use in my writing, right?) So, some time ago, I decided that I needed to have a more normal working experience than to be a full time psychic reader. (Just believe me when I say I had my reasons, and the financial aspect was not the most driving one – but definitely did factor in.) I felt like I needed a normal job with a steady paycheck. So I found one, and then promptly found a much better one. I took the job and I love my coworkers (and I even love my supervisor. As a matter of fact, I love most of the supervisors there. The people I work with are kind of amazing!) I set my intention with the Universe, and this job very quickly manifested and was everything I could’ve wanted in a ‘normal’ job. Unfortunately, it wasn’t too long before I started getting antsy. This rapidly progressed into dreading having to go into work. All the while, I’m trying to adjust other factors of my life to compensate. I adjusted my schedule, my diet, rearranged furniture – I projected my discontent into every other area of my life. And what does it boil down to? I’m out of alignment with putting more time into a job than into my calling.

That’s right – my desire for normal and predictable completely screwed me over. Now, does that mean that I’m going to completely screw someone else over in turn by just up and quitting? No. No amount of personal pain or struggle entitles you to be hurtful to someone else. And just because I stepped out of alignment doesn’t give me permission to be irresponsible to step back into my alignment. I have plans in place to be able to transition back to my full-time magical lifestyle, and I’ve been open and honest with my supervisor about my intention. We found a date range that will be the least detrimental for me to leave the company, and I intend to stick it out until then (unless the Universe gives me a huge clue-by-four across the head that I need to not wait it out).

So, when I’m feeling some kind of way, the first thing I try to do is dig a little deeper so that I have a clear picture of my motivations and where my feeling is coming from. When I feel this way, I usually know that there’s something else brewing under the surface. I may not be able to slap a band-aid on it and call it good, but once I’ve acknowledged the complete picture of what’s happening with me I find some peace. This peace comes from the fact that moving through my discomfort has led me to deeper and more satisfying experiences of joy in my life. And while it doesn’t usually make the experience any less intense, this does seem to grant me enough strength and patience to see my way through it. It is my hope that this article can help you with recognizing this process in your own life, so that you can take the reigns and embrace the change instead of getting in your own way.

When most people think of intuition, they immediately associate it with the realm of the ‘psychic’. This isn’t an unfair connection to make – those of us that work in the psychic arts do lean heavily on this sense. I believe that one of the reasons that ‘intuition’ is so unrelatable as a term is that it isn’t particularly well defined to most people. For me though, it does have a pretty distinct meaning.

I define intuition as an inner knowing. The technical term for this is claircognizance – or the ‘extrasensory extension of thought or knowledge’. Still too unapproachable as a definition? Try thinking about it this way.

The mind perceives the world as a series of patterns. The logical brain takes in, extrapolates,and analyzes data which it then is able to recognize patterns allowing you to interact with the world in a predictable way. Intuition is the faculty of the mind that allows you to perceive patterns before you have enough ‘logical data’ to recognize them as following any set pattern.

You’re doing this all the time already. Think of when you go see a mystery movie and you instantly know who is the culprit as soon as they make an appearance on screen. What about when your friend introduces you to their new beau, and you instantly find the timeline for the ending of the relationship flash through your mind, and then it plays out as you expected it? What about when you send someone a supportive message because you felt like they may need a boost? All of these are ways that your intuition can sneak into your everyday perception. So why don’t we trust these impressions to guide us?

Blocks to Accessing your Intuition

There are many hurdles to trusting your inner knowing. The big reason for this is that many times these ‘nudges’ don’t speak as loudly as the logical mind. Also, they don’t have much data to back them up, so the logic train can run over these precious little insights. These are the biggest three ways that logic bullies your intuition.

Doubt

Doubt should totally be a four letter word (I mean, who needs a silent ‘b’ anyways?) Doubt creeps in when the logical mind decides to be passive aggressive and poke at what you just “know” to be true, even though you aren’t sure why you know it.

Negative Mindset

Nothing squelches the intuition like when you get fixated on a bad pattern. Think about it – when you have a bad day, how does it start off? When do you decide that it’s going to be a bad day? Then once you have this “realization”, how often can you pull yourself out of this nosedive? Once you start down this path, your logical mind has already recognized the pattern of it being a ‘bad day’. But this isn’t good enough for the logical mind – it has to REALLY drive the point home, so you just continue to see more and more ‘bad’ pile up in front of you.

Fear

The root of doubt and negative mindsets is almost always fear (which IS a four letter word). If doubt is the logical mind being passive aggressive, and negative thinking is your sense of logic being a being a know-it-all-showoff, then fear is when your sense of logic has decided to be a bully. Now, there are a lot of different shades of fear, and not all of them should be discarded. For example, I’m fairly clausterphobic. I hate small spaces! I get nervous, panicky, and yes – downright afraid. I am pretty sure that when I get into an elevator that the walls aren’t going to cave in on me, but I try to honor that fear and take the stairs when it’s feasible to do so.

The kind of fear that I’m talking about is the one that is just as gripping but tries to be polite, almost like a backhanded compliment. These are the fears that crop up and stand in the way of your happiness because you’ve allowed yourself to believe that something ‘doesn’t make sense’, or that you need a resource to achieve it that you just don’t have access to. These are the kinds of fear that you want to face head on, dig your heels in and convince yourself that your happiness is worth the risk!

The key to overcoming these hurdles is TRUST. Many of us find it harder to trust in ourselves than to trust in a divine intelligence orchestrating the Universe. Give yourself permission to be wrong. Encourage yourself to explore. Trust in yourself enough to try. So what if you fail – the real threat to your logical mind is if you succeed! In order to learn to trust in yourself – specifically your intuition – try beefing it up and testing it’s limits in by exploring it in your day to day world.

Here are a few ways that you can engage your intuition in your everyday life.

Psychic Navigation

Engage your intuition to help you find the most effective route to your next destination. Let me be clear – I’m not saying close your and trust your inner psychic to do the driving. Nor am I suggesting that you decide to get to somewhere you’ve never been without looking up the directions. I’m suggesting trust that intuitive nudge that tells you to take an alternate route to work today, maybe to avoid excessive traffic or an accident.

“Seems Right”

Play the ‘it seems right’ game. When your leaving a restaurant or the mall, try to figure out what kind of car the person walking in front of you drives. Allow yourself to make up “fictitious” backgrounds to people you see based on your intuitive impression of just seeing them. (Even if you’re never able to confirm the information, this allows your mind to expand into that ‘gray area’ of creativity, which is actually a safe space for the intuition to flourish because the logical mind tolerates creativity.) Try matching coffee mugs to your coworkers. While this may seem like a game, the more you can do this and learn to trust your intuition, the more it will be allowed to just randomly pop up throughout your day.

Psychic Dieting

Most of us know what’s good for our bodies on a general level. We all know living off of pizza is not the road to longevity and health. However, sometimes we just have an urge to shift what we’re eating. Sometimes it’s a craving, like you really want a cheeseburger. Other times you just have a notion that you’d feel so much better if you only ate raw fruits and vegetables until dinner. Pay attention to what you’re sensing. This is also a pretty tricky area to navigate though. Do you actually sense that the gallon of cookie dough ice cream is a good idea, or are you just having a sugar craving? Many people are truly surprised of the happiness and healthiness that they feel once they ditch any crazy diet rules that they’ve been following because someone else told them that “this is how you do it.”

Judgement versus Intuition

Sometimes you meet someone and you just don’t like them. I used to have an open door policy in my life, where I gave anyone and everyone a chance because I see the good in people. Now, I’ve learned (the hard way) to follow my gut impression of a person or situation. Become mindful of what your intuition is telling you when you first meet someone. See if you can identify the reason why you feel a particular way about them – is it how they’re dressed, the tone of their voice, etc. Follow the flow in your mind to how this has proven true before. Could you find an example? If so, then you may be dealing with a judgment. If you find that it ‘just seems like something so and so would do/like/say’…… then you may actually be dealing with a veiled intuitive impression. Something (an indistinct something) reminds you of someone else. See if you can extend that into how that person reminds you of someone else. When that happens, test your theory against what gave you the initial impression. Here is a good example of how intuition can sneak an impression in on you. Joey’s shoes seem like something my ex Roger would wear. What about Joey is bringing Roger to mind?…Roger did cheat on me, a lot actually. But those shoes don’t seem like shoes a cheater would wear. What else could it be……Well, Roger was hugely into his dog Spot, like ridiculously into him, like his whole world revolved around that dog. I bet Joey is a huge dog person. Those do seem like shoes a dog lover would wear…..

Flowing With and Engaging Synchronicity

I like to engage synchronicity to receive messages and guidance. My personal favorite way to do this is something I call the Combination Lock method. First, I come up with a set of three or four numbers ranging from 1 to 20 (usually between 1 and 12 though). For example, I may choose 6, 11 and 3. Then I’ll go onto Youtube and pick my first video from the starting page. I count down to the 6th recommended video, click on that one, then repeat with the 11th video, then the 3rd. I will then watch this video for any messages or ‘cosmic hints’ that may pop up. On occasion, this will lead me to a really long video, at which point I add the the numbers to my ‘combination’ (in this case, 20) and I’ll forward to the 20th minute of the video and look out for messages. When I try it this time, I end up on a video that’s a song about not feeling good enough for someone, which is something I’ve struggled with in the past. When I repeat the process with the same combination from the mobile app on my phone, I end up on an Abraham Hicks video about how you create together with your beloved. (See a theme going here.) So what I take from this is that my day today is about acknowledging my self worth so that I can engage in the process of creating the life that my honey bunny and I desire.

A big part of finding your personal ‘lucky streak’ is being willing to go with the flow of synchronicity. The Universe is constantly conspiring to put you in the right place at the right time, but for this to be effective you have to pay attention to the nudges that come from that still small quiet space within where the intuition resides. Engage your intuition and set your intention to fall into your flow, then see how far it can take you!

Riding the flow of synchronicity is far more than just having a ‘lucky streak’ though. When you are in alignment with your soul’s purpose and drive, you experience a sense of contentment mixed with a bit of joy and excitement that underpins your awareness. You experience a sense of wonder and emotional ease. (This is not to say that everything you experience is necessarily ‘easy’, but moreso a that you don’t fight the feeling.)

These are just a few examples of how you can use your sense of intuition or claricognizance to help you in your everyday. Once you’re able to harness this sense, then you can more readily tap into the wellspring of energy that creates the flow through your life, and ideally you can learn to ride the tide instead of fighting the current.

Manifesting is easy. We do it all the time. There is so much material on consciously creating your reality that is available out there already. (I’m having a torrid love affair with the teachings of Abraham at the moment). When engaging the Law of Attraction to consciously co-create your experience the Universe, there are many different theories and approaches, but they all have one thing in common: your emotions are a key component. Emotions act as both a fuel for your desires, as well as a guidance system for when you’re off the beaten path towards your goals. Because of this, empaths have a unique challenge when it comes to manifesting.

Empaths frequently have the added challenge of having to sort through their emotional landscape to determine what is theirs versus what is someone else’s emotional experience. This can be confusing and detrimental to the process of creating our world, or it can be a beautiful boost to our ability to create.

It’s important to remember that we are always manifesting. ALWAYS. The first step to doing this more effectively is to be conscious of how and what we manifest. This is where I look to the wisdom of the temple of Delphi for guidance. On the walls of temple where the famous oracles were revered is the most simple and profound phrase: Know Thyself. This is coupled with a lesser revered piece of wisdom carved into the walls as well: Nothing to Excess. These are the two key phrases that guided the oracles at Delphi, as well as the people that came to see them.

Know Thyself

Knowing yourself has a few different components to it for empaths. First, we have to be fully aware of what OUR emotional state is. To know this, we have to find our emotional baseline – that frequency that we are operating at on any given day. I find it helpful to become aware of the baseline as soon as I wake. Try keeping an impression journal: start your day by recording your dreams if you remember them, but also take a good look at what you’re feeling. When we sleep, we go through a little bit of a ‘re-boot’, which allows us to engage the world from an entirely different perspective than what we had the day before.

“But what if I wake up on the wrong side of the bed?” No worries! This happens to the best of us! First though, let’s correct this line of thinking. There is no ‘wrong’ side of the bed. How you feel is how you feel. Honor your baseline, even if it isn’t exactly where you want it to be. This gives you a prime opportunity to shift your emotional frequency to a place that’s more appealing. When this happens, it’s actually a wonderful gift – the opportunity to truly explore where you are, in this moment. What is this feeling telling you? How is your emotional guidance system telling you that you are out of alignment with your current circumstance? Are you off the path to what it is that you’re telling the Universe that you want to realize? Are you just off-beat – trying to dance against the rhythm of the Universe instead of being in time with it? If this is the case, are you resisting, or maybe you’re trying to move faster than the currents of creation? These are just a few points to ponder, to get you thinking of what’s brewing beneath the surface.

When you rise, give yourself a few moments of contemplation. Sit for a moment and look to the core of your baseline. What do you wish to change about that feeling? What aspect of your emotional landscape do you want to heighten? (Be careful here! It’s really easy to identify that part that we don’t want. Realization of it is one thing, but don’t let that be the seed driving you. You’re feeding the feeling with your focus, so make sure that you’re feeding the flowers and not the weeds.) Once you’re aware of this focal point, figure out all of the things that can support it and help it to flourish, then start bringing those things into being.

The key point to remember here is to be in the present moment. Let’s look at an example to illustrate this point and tie this all together. Say you’re wanting to consciously manifest a new job for yourself, and you wake up on the ‘wrong’ side of the bed. Once you sit in contemplation, you realize that it’s because you don’t want to go in to your present job today. When you dig in, you realize that you have lost all love for your position. Why? Let’s say that it’s because you’re bored and unappreciated. That’s great! We have a starting point! How can you feed the feelings of excitement and appreciation? These don’t have to be earth-shattering kind of actions. Decide to wear something bold, something that’s exciting and makes you smile. You can take a different route into your job. Maybe pick up donuts or a card for an office mate that shows how much you appreciate them. Once you shift your mind into this space, then think about ways to manifest that new job. Give your resume the once over and consider changing a phrase or two to something a bit more exciting. (For instance, instead of ‘receptionist’ or answering phones’, you could ‘help direct and connect callers to the resources that can help them the most’.) Then, it’s a matter of finding and following your inspiration. Once you create the proper emotional environment for your manifestation to become sustained, then it magnetizes to you! It already exists – you’ve already created it. It’s about holding the space for it to express into the world around you. It’s drawn to you like a magnet.

Now, for empaths, having this baseline also helps you to be more aware of what is yours and what’s someone elses. Empaths are exquisite manifesters because the emotional charge is a bit higher than other folks’ might be. But this can create a lot of turmoil and heartache too, because we tend to take on other people’s junk as our own. By feeding your own baseline, you will start to notice that your emotional output is stronger too. Your good mood becomes infectious. You may also notice that certain people just aren’t around you as much. That’s because empaths are super magnets! We attract what’s in alignment with our field of creation, and those things that aren’t simply don’t stick. The people and situations that aren’t in alignment with you are either ‘repelled’ by your vibration because it doesn’t match their own, or because you’re manifesting so much of your focused desire that they just don’t command the same attention from you.

Imagine, if you will, a sheet of aluminium foil with iron filings on it. When you run the magnet across the surface, the iron filings will attract and stick to the magnet, but the aluminium foil (even though it’s metal) just stays there. And what happens to the iron filings on the magnet? They carry that magnetic charge through them and attract more iron filings. Empaths function like an electromagnet – that extra voltage super charges and grows that magnetic field. The trick is to make sure that your magnetic field is being charged by focusing on what you do want instead of what you don’t.

This doesn’t mean that you won’t come into contact with people or situations that aren’t ‘magnetizable’; but it does mean that those people and situations won’t stick to you, as long as you don’t shift your focus into alignment with their focus. Keep your focus on your own baseline, and you’ll soon find that they just aren’t woven into the fabric of your reality – they are more like a loose thread that eventually falls away.

In Part 2 of the Empaths and Manifesting series, we will talk about the other part of the idiom – Nothing to Excess – as well as look further east for some inspiration. (Part 2 will be posted a little later this week.)

It’s one thing to state that we create our own reality, to believe it. It’s another when we can see the workings of how we’ve created it, and it isn’t necessarily pretty. We frequently get caught in a cycle of attracting what we don’t want, and it primarily boils down to three main reasons:

Focusing on what we DON’T want to manifest instead of what we do

Fear, and lastly

Not being clear on what it is we actually want

It is a deceptively easy practice to fall into putting our focus on what we don’t want instead of keeping our eyes on the actual goal. As a matter of fact, it’s a necessary part of the process of creating a life that you desire to develop opinions, which means that you will need to be aware that there are things out there that aren’t to your taste. When it becomes a problem is when these dislikes begin to drive your desires and what you’re manifesting in your life. (More on this in a moment.)

Fear seems like a pretty straightforward hindrance to your happiness, but it wears many different guises and creeps into places that it just doesn’t belong. Worry and anxiety are thinly veiled forms of fear, but sometimes it can also convince you that it’s actually ‘kindhearted concern’ or ‘common sense’, when really it’s just that part of yourself that wants to displace your desires to maintain the world that you know. Let’s face it, change is hard. The unknown can be scary. But it’s also exciting, exhilarating and that’s where the magic happens! Think about it – does the caterpillar shed its skin and don its wings in plain sight of everyone? No – it does it in its private little cocoon, out of sight and away from the rest of the world.

When we focus our thoughts and create our reality, our biggest hurdle is usually ourselves. We contradict ourselves, if not in our thoughts, in the conflicting emotions that drive our manifestations. We can think that we are crystal clear on what it is that we want, and yet never see it reflected in the physical manifestation of our lives. We can light candles, say prayers, create vision boards, do affirmations, and be patient, and look for it, and……..nothing. Why do you think that is?

Because we don’t know ourselves. We ignore the parts of what we’re feeling because we think that we ‘shouldn’t be’ feeling that way because it will get in the way of what we are manifesting. But when we feel fear, we aren’t meant to ignore it. We’re meant to explore it. Why are we fearful? What is this fear? What am I actually fearing? What is it about this particular thing or situation that I feel pulls me out of alignment with the flow of Infinite Love?

When addressing fear in particular, you can’t think that you’re going to resolve it with logic. What you have to do is dig into the feeling and get to know it. Determine if it’s a good fear or a bad fear. The way that I do this is by sinking into the feeling and I see if I can describe it with something else. Is it exhilarating, exciting, overwhelming, do I just not want to do this, etc.? If it’s a good fear (exhilarating, exciting, etc.) then I can just re-align and adjust, and what was standing in the way of my manifesting is now fueling it! Now, if it’s a ‘bad fear’, (overwhelming, I don’t want to actually do this, etc.) then you need to actually look at what you’re trying to bring into manifestation because you probably don’t actually want it. Unfortunately, there’s not an easy way to resolve this conflict – you have to dig deep and figure out what it is that you really actually want; otherwise you’re going to just continue to sabotage your efforts.

We also unconsciously sabotage ourselves when we don’t realize that our ‘desires’ are really just reactions to what we don’t want. Think about this – is there a silent implication attached to the reality that you’re manifesting? For instance, are you focused on manifesting a job that pays a six figure income? Did this desire come about in response to feeling undervalued, underpaid or underappreciated in your current position? So then, is your desire really “a job that pays a six figure income” or is it “a job that pays a six figure income” with a silent “(unlike the crappy position I’m in now where I make a pittance and feel underappreciated)”?

Our experiences give us the roadmap to understanding what it is that we desire, but the trick to manifesting the life we desire is to find that which we desire even in the circumstances that are overall not desirable. In other words, yes you may want a job that appreciates you more, and part of this appreciation is paying you what you feel you deserve to be paid for the work that you do. To begin the process of creating this, you can’t hold your current situation as a stark contrast of what you don’t want. Seeds don’t grow in a barren field, and this includes seeds of desire. You have to find the appreciation in your current situation, and then you put your focus there. You put your energy there. You find the co-worker that does appreciate you and you go out of your way to share your appreciation with them. You grow your appreciation, and then extend it and begin to notice the little things that you like that you’d want to experience in the next position. It may be as simple as ‘I really like having the coffee station this close to my workspace’. Grow it into an experience of gratitude.

Manifesting isn’t about accumulating the most ‘cool stuff’, bigger paychecks, or any of that external crap. It’s about placing yourself into a space of alignment and being brave enough to know what you desire, and then to watch that unfold into the world around you. When we live in a space of alignment, when we know our own truth intimately and to follow it, then we can live in the world of our desire. We all deserve to live in a space beyond our own fear. The Universe itself is perpetually expanding, so why are holding ourselves to less of a standard? Allow yourself to expand beyond your fears; let them to become excitement! Allow yourself to know your desires intimately as you come to know yourself. And allow your Universe to reflect those desires into the world around you. Sometimes it’s just about realizing that you were getting in your own way.

As we wind our way through our lives, we find our challenges popping up to greet us around every bend.When we greet our challenges, we should keep two powerful tools of aligning us with spirit in mind: Atonement and Foregiveness.All we need to know about these beautiful concepts are contained within the words themselves.

Frequently, our challenges place us on either side of the blame game, and this is the most potent use of our two featured tools of the Spirit.When we hurt another person or we perceive another to hurt us, we should think back to the wisdom inherent in process of forgiving and atonement.

Atonement is traditionally thought of as ‘making amends’ or ‘rectifying a wrong’.If we break the word down a little bit, though, we can see that there is a much more powerful process at work.At-one-ment. At – being the point in which we are, One – being the description of that point, and Ment – being the actions we take from this perspective. When we ‘atone’, we become more ‘at-one’ with a person, seeing a situation from their vantage point, and acting from that knowledge, usually with apologies.Here is a stunningly simple thought:What if we practiced at-one-ment on a regular basis, with all people that we meet?

What if we were able to recognize that all people that cross our paths are amazing and beautiful reflections of our indwelling spirits?What if we pre-emptively reached out to connect with them, seeing ‘us’ instead of ‘me and them’?We are all of the same spirit, the same source, and the process of atonement is simply reminding ourselves of that.

We can break the word down again and discover more hidden wisdom – a-tone-ment.In this etymology, we see that by recognizing the indwelling spirit of others, that we are actively setting the tone of leading a spirit driven life.When we see all as one, then others are more likely to see that as well, as it is simply a reminder of the soul level wisdom that we all know deep down.

So many of us are actively challenged on the other end of the blame game as well.In these instances, the appropriate tool to use is ‘for-give-ness’.For- represents our need to act without prompting (as in be-FOR-e).Give – means that we give the situation over completely – no takesies backsides!Ness – is the state of being in that moment.So, in other words, you are accepting that you cannot control the actions of another, and that what is past is past.When you forgive, then you release the power that a situation has over you or your life, and moving beyond it.That doesn’t mean you didn’t learn anything from the situation, it simply means that you have reclaimed your power from it.

By incorporating these concepts into your life, you clear up more space in your heart for love.You re-affirm your connection to all of life through Source, and you accept your true power.I mean, what’s more powerful than being one with all and accepting more love into your heart?

A lot of people excitedly sign up for our classes to learn to strengthen their intuitive gifts and deepen their spiritual practice. The students usually take lengthy notes, absorbing every word we say, then leave to return to their ‘mundane lives’. So many people focus on developing their intuitive gifts without any practical application to their lives.

The main reason that one should take a class is to help them to better their life.This being said, there are an amazing number of gifted and dedicated spiritual or psychic teachers out there who can support you in your spiritual growth.It is up to you to use the techniques by applying them to everyday living.

Let’s take a for instance…… Grounding is a vital part of any psychic’s reading regimen.That’s all well and good, but what can a grounding technique do for you on a daily basis?Actually, grounding can help you to keep your energy fields balanced and cleared, which will then give a sense of clarity, focus and energy.This is ideal for trips to crowded places (such as malls, grocery stores or awkward holiday parties).

You should use your intuitive guidance in shopping for deals to check for quality, to help find a prime parking space, or to even find the best route between two places (one of James’ favorite tricks, especially when Elige got them lost!)

Another consideration is that as we develop our intuitive and spiritual power, the Universe will test our new traits and skills to show us just how much we’re progressing.Keep that in mind as you are consistently challenged by a seemingly incompetent coworker, or a crazy driver on the interstate.We cultivate the higher traits of wisdom, compassion and spiritual awareness so that we make live in these states on a daily basis.If you are anything like us, then it takes three things to do this: Practice, Practice and Practice.

One of the most potent uses of developing spirituality and intuitive prowess is our ability to facilitate healing.This is best done by maintaining an awareness of health on a daily basis, and addressing our minor energetic imbalances before they grow into physical symptoms.This also means dealing with stress pre-emptively as opposed to letting it grow to a point of overwhelming you.

This new concept of intuitive and spiritual functioning is one that we feel has been overlooked, as there are many classes on psychic and spiritual development, but few that help one to incorporate their intuition into everyday living.We intend to address this through lectures, workshops and classes over throughout the new year.Keep your eyes open for a series we’re calling Intuited Living through……… This series will contain lectures, articles and classes to help you integrate your spirituality and intuition into your everyday life.

Mysticism is defined by dictionary.com as “a doctrine of an immediate spiritual intuition of truths believed to transcend ordinary understanding, or of a direct, intimate union of the soul with God through contemplation or ecstasy.”In short order, mysticism is experiencing the Divine.Mysticism has gotten a misunderstood wrap over the years.A mystic is usually seen as some scantily clad guru that sits in contemplation upon a distant mountain top.This is true.Some see a mystic in those that give themselves over to monastic living, donning habits or robes to spend the majority of their time in prayer.This also is true.It may shock you, though, that a mystic is just as likely to wear a business suit in a boardroom as they are the archaic apparel of some religious order.

Here is my logic:God/Source/Divinity is everywhere at all times, in all things.If that is the case, how can we be separate from this in the first place?That’s right ladies and gentlemen.We are ALL constantly in a state of mystical union!So what’s the big difference between us and the adepts sitting in quiet meditation in some remote mountain getaway?They just REMEMBER that we are all of Source! That’s it!It really is that simple!

So, then let’s talk about this.You may be sitting there completely and thoughtfully understanding this. So, why don’t you feel more mystical?Our connections with Spirit or Source are not always physically perceptible.Our connection to Source is perceived much like the weather.There are days when I work from home and I won’t even get dressed until noon. (That’s right folks! There is a chance that when you’ve gotten your early morning phone readings that I’ve been swathed in a robe and my smiley face pajama pants! How’s that for a visual?)Well, when I do get ready to leave the house, I may peer out the window to see the bright and gorgeous sunshiney day, so I put on shorts and a short sleeved shirt, only then I find that this beautiful sunshine is part of a conspiracy of nature that insists on my catching hypothermia!So like the weather, Spirit gives us hints to our connection, but we don’t fully know it until we walk through the door.

The state of being that we normally think of as ‘mystical’ is actually a state called ‘ecstasy’, which means ‘rapturous delight or overpowering and intense emotion’.Ecstasy is actually derived from the Greek word meaning ‘trance’, and that is how we find our connection to Source.Ecstasy is basically the moment that we become aware of our wholeness in/with Source.Ecstasy is when the boundaries of ‘me’ fall away leaving ‘we’.

Here’s a contemplation/meditation to lead you into a state of everyday ecstasy.

Brew yourself a cup of coffee (or tea, if you’re not a coffee drinker).Sit and completely take in the aroma before you take your first sip. As you have your first taste, close your eyes and bring to mind the coffee bean that this delicious brew originated with.Let the full bodied taste wash over your tongue and mentally connect with the coffee plant that the bean came from.Follow it from a tiny seed sprouting to a fully grown plant bearing it’s bean.Feel the connection to mountainous soil that it’s grown in.See yourself completely as this plant.Now, as you take another sip, feel the hands of the man (or woman) who picked your bean.Feel their rugged earthy texture plucking you delicately from your stalk.Really feel him!What was his mood when he picked you?What was thinking about?What is his family like?Really feel it.Then, bring your awareness back to your brew.Take another sip and be aware of the water that supplied the liquid for your morning perk.In your mind, follow the water down into the water table or to the lake that your water comes from.Feel your awareness as expansive as that great lake.Allow it to expand, feeling the many forms of life that are supported inside of you.Simply be aware.Now allow your awareness to expand into the lofty waters in the clouds of the sky.Feel yourself floating high above the world.Feel the winds gently blowing you about.As you take another sip, feel yourself grow heavy and fall from your cloudy perch.Feel the freedom and smell the air as you rush downward, landing on the bean of a coffee plant.Now, once again feel the same hand reach out and pluck the bean, leaving you to fall into the mountainous soil.Feel the impact that you have against the ground.Realize now that you are the mountain.You are the plant.You are the farmer. You are the water.You are all things.We are all things.All things are one, in every moment. In every breath.In every sip of coffee.

Ecstasy and mysticism are all encompassing.These moments are simply labels, not for what we do, but for the moments that we remember all that we are.The strongest form of mysticism is when you allow yourself to realize that you are only separated from the person in front of you by thought.Thought or consciousness of separateness is the only thing that really makes you separate.

We are less like individual glasses of water, and more like waves of one great ocean.When we think of the individual waves, then we think of all of the Bobs and Janes.When we think of the great ocean, then we think in terms of Source.Being part of the ocean doesn’t make the wave any less individual or unique. If anything, it empowers the wave.Alone, a wave can leave a treasure on the beach or perhaps sully a sandcastle.When the wave is empowered by the ocean of which it is a part, then it can be a growing tide or even a tsunami!

When we seek power, as we as humans tend to do, then we can either find ways to differentiate ourselves or disengage from the crowd.When we find our power, our true power, it inevitably is the power of connection, the power of community, the power of Source, and of Unity.

Most of us are at least somewhat familiar with the Seven Chakras of Vedic Lore.They are the Root, Sacral, Solar Plexus, Heart, Throat, Brow and Crown Chakras.A quick search on the internet will provide a plethora of information on these subtle energy organs.But, there is one frequently overlooked chakra that I work with on a regular basis.It’s called the Bindu Chakra.(Don’t feel bad if you haven’t heard about it – it only surfaced for me recently in my research.)

I have been working with an energy point in my psychic development, especially with channeling and clairaudience.I began to realize that when I would channel, the energy would connect with me through the back of my head, where my spine and my skull would meet.As I worked with this energy point further, I realized that it was a minor point most of time, only really becoming noticeable during channeling sessions and when a guide who I had channeled would speak to me.

I was researching the chakras for an upcoming project when I stumbled upon mention of the Bindu Chakra.I had heard this term before, but directly in relation to the Brow chakra, not as a standalone structure of energy.I followed the links and found that indeed this was considered a fairly prominent chakra in Tantric lore.

Bindu translates to ‘focus, or point’.(Bindi are the jeweled or painted ‘points’ that Indian women adorn their foreheads with).The Bindu Chakra is said to be placed approximately at the point on the back of the head that I described earlier.It is where Indian holy men (called Brahmin) would grow a single tuft of hair on the back of their heads to honor this chakra. It is also said that this point can produce a nectar of immortality or poison of death. [1]The sited article also mentions that this chakra functions as the crown chakra for our four legged companions, as well as having acted as ours before we evolved into our current upright stance.

My experiences with this amazing chakra have led me to an understanding of it’s mythology.This point is affiliated with trance workings.It is this point that ‘springs’ us from our bodies to either venture astrally or in the shamanic realms, as well as to allow the energy of trusted guides to speak through us in channeling sessions.

The mythology of this being our ‘pre-upright crown chakra’ speaks of how societies have evolved.The world is losing many of it’s ecstatic trance practitioners.Many religions frown upon the use of altered states to commune with the realm of Spirit or deity.It was once common place for us to connect to these realities and experience them as if they were as physical as the body we inhabited.Now these practices have become watered down into meditation techniques (which are an invaluable but wholly separate practices). Worse yet, they are more frequently viewed as savage relics of ‘pre-civilized society’.

There is a movement to change that in many spiritual communities, even though some involved may not even recognize it.Certain Christian sects practice the arts of prophecy and speaking in tongues, which involve deep trance states.Spiritualism and the Lightwork/New Age communities utilize this chakra in channeling sessions.There is a resurgence of Earth based and experiential/ecstatic spiritual practices, such as Neo-shamanism and Wicca. The tides are turning back to valuing the personal spiritual experiences of realities.

The most pronounced understanding of the mythos of the Bindu chakra lies in the production of the Nectar of Immortality or the Poison of Death.This speaks to the power of knowledge and wisdom in my eyes.What I derive from this saying is that knowledge is powerful, but Wisdom and Experience are Immortal.This is the energy center that can synthesize our knowledge with our experiences.If the synthesis is successful, then we achieve inspiration and wisdom.If it is not successful, then we gain misunderstandings and misperceptions.The synthesis that could be transformed into wisdom has now become a dogma or such a rigid belief that one can’t budge from it.

It is also very important to note two further points.The first is that your nectar of immortality will likely differ from any other persons.Every experience and understanding of spirit is valuable, and wisdom doesn’t take the well worn roads.It happens in the shady unforged path that a person ventures out on by themselves.Every path has value, and it is vital to remember this point.

The next and final point I will make is that it is safest to train for trance work with an experienced practitioner.The focus and dedication required for certain types of trance can cause strong imbalances in the energy field if precautions aren’t taken and safeguards put in place.Just as if you were training for the Olympics, proper technique (whether swimming, running or gymnastics) is crucial to safety and success.